The Agency

She is called the Tempest.

Giovanni deLuca was a rail-thin man who towered, and leaned, over everyone in New York. He hated America, Americans, the Irish, the French, even other Italians, for their petty squabbles and their coarse urban filth. He spoke rapidly with a punishing staccato accent and made wild gestures with his long, spidery hands. Everything about him was harsh and ugly.

There was only one thing deLuca loved, and it was the only reason Fox had anything to do with him--or vice versa, come to that. Fox knew genius when he saw it, and deLuca knew a virtuoso when he met one, and the one thing both loved above all else was enough to unite them, on occasion, despite their mutual enmity.

"Good evening, Signore," Fox said, welcoming deLuca into the parlor. The tall man wore his dark overcoat, and carried in his arms an object that made my heart leap with anticipation.

"The piece is finished according to your desires," deLuca said. His voice sounded like a creaking old door.

"Is it, now?" Fox asked, sitting down opposite the man, who set the case on the table and unsnapped its clasps. "Let's see it."

I stayed hidden where I was, just outside the parlor doorway in the shadows, but I could see the gleam of the varnish, the ebony fingerboard, almost glowing in the firelight...my fingers itched to trace over its curves, polished to silken smoothness and stained a deep red-gold. I couldn't take my eyes off of it.

Fox lifted the instrument from its nest, turning it over in his hands, examining every inch of it as he had once examined my skin, years ago, when my flesh still bore the warmth and eventual decay of humanity. I thought of all the measurements the luthier had taken of my hands, the length of my arms, and how he had protested that as young as I was, those measurements might still change, and then all his careful custom work would be null and void. I thought that was amusing--I was hardly a child, though people often mistook me for younger than I was. Fox had merely laughed and insisted that I wasn't going to grow, or shrink, ever, and that he wanted an instrument that would last through time, its tone and finish growing more and more beautiful and pure with the passing of years.

"I must say, Giovanni, you have quite outdone yourself," Fox told the luthier, who understood the rarity--and therefore the absolute truth--of the compliment. "If she sounds half as perfect as she feels, I will be sure and add another twenty percent to your payment."

DeLuca nodded. "Let your...young prodigy...try it out, you'll see."

I felt myself blush. Fox was discreet, but there were always some who knew I was more than his apprentice, and certainly more than a servant. On the rare occasion we went into town together there were whispers and knowing glances. I wondered how deLuca had figured it out, given that I had met him only once and hardly spoken the whole time.

"Excellent idea," Fox agreed. "Jason, come out and meet your Christmas gift."

I left the cover of the shadows reluctantly, and when deLuca saw me, he went pale.

"My god," he breathed, more emotion showing on his face than I'd ever seen him display. "You look...different, boy. Have you been ill?"

"Yes, Maestro," I replied with a smile, lifting my eyes from the floor to meet his. He didn't flinch, but I could see that he wanted to. "I am feeling better now."

I looked over at Fox, who smiled at the luthier's fear. When last we had met I had been mortal, unremarkable. My playing had been the same--skillful, bordering on inspired, but nothing destined to win accolades. When last we had met, I had never lain with Fox, never surrendered to his lips and hands and teeth, and knew nothing of true hunger, nothing of the kind of darkness and desire that were a part of my every cell, aching, calling out for release.

I stared at deLuca, watching the pulse of the blue vein at his neck, the branches of veins in his hands--if I listened I could hear the blood flowing within all of them, and I wondered if he would taste as dry and creaky as he sounded, or if his one love, that thing we three shared, would bleed true, and flavor him with the sweetness he drew from his instruments.

"Show the Maestro how you've improved since he last heard you."

I nodded, and he handed me the violin.

I touched it at first as they had, my hands running over the body, the wood alive beneath my palms. It was more than beautiful, it was a masterpiece, sized perfectly to me, designed to live as long as I did. I ran my fingertip around an odd swirl in the wood that brought to mind a whirlpool or a funnel cloud. Such a thing should have weakened the wood, but I could feel its density, flawless.

"I call her the Tempest," deLuca said, a note of pride in his voice. "The power she can unleash...I am not sure, Duvalier, that your charge here can wield it. Perhaps you should keep him on his student instrument a while longer?"

Fox laughed. "I assure you, Signore, he is more than capable. He has...blossomed under my tutelage."

I had to bite back a laugh as well. True, my master had taught me the violin, to read and write in six languages, to appreciate art and literature; but thinking of all else I had learned at his side...or beneath him, or in the hay in the stables, or on my knees in this very room...I banished the thought as my body began to burn, and lifted the violin to my shoulder, where it settled against my chin as if it had grown from seed there.

I touched the bow to the strings, my left hand pressing into them tenderly, then harder, testing, almost teasing. I smiled and closed my eyes.

Oh, she was a skilled courtesan, my Tempest, and I swayed with her as my right arm worked through the air and my left fingers danced over her, slow at first, drawing moans of delight from her building gradually to rapid cries.

By the time I was finished I was sweating, panting, and the last note sounded into utter silence. I could hear Fox's heart pounding, see his fingers digging into the chair's arms as he resisted the urge to come to me and tear my clothes at the seams. I let my gaze find his, and I smiled, knowing that the minute deLuca left, that's exactly what would happen.

For his part the luthier was gaping at me, openmouthed, rheumy eyes wide with shock. It was the better part of a minute before he could say, "Good God, Duvalier, this boy needs to be on every royal stage in Europe. He could make you an even richer man, and famous all over the world."

"I have no need for fame nor money, and I have no love for Europe," Fox replied. "America deserves beauty just as much, and needs it more, for we brought very little with us when we fled the old world. Thank you, Signore deLuca--you have earned every penny and more."

I stood silent through their conversation, my attention full of the Tempest, feeling her swell and reside in my grasp. There were things I could do, Fox had said, with the right instrument--he had seen it when he turned me. Only deLuca built violins that were capable of channeling the energy I might one day be able to raise. I believed him--I had popped dozens of strings on the graceful violin he had taught me on, and when I asked to try out his master instrument, a Stradivarius from 1703, he refused. It was too valuable for me to leave scorch marks on with my fingers, he'd said with a laugh, and he was only half joking.

I didn't move until I knew the luthier was gone, and heard Fox's footsteps returning to the parlor.

"What do you think?" he asked, lowering his voice to its usual softness. He was charming and erudite, even cheerful around others, but this was the timbre he used with me and me alone, and it sent a shiver through me. "Will it do?"

I chuckled. "I think so, Master." I smiled at him. "Although I do pity you now, stuck with that antique of yours."

He swatted me on the backside with a laugh. "Shut up and play for me, boy. Remember I just sunk a good bit of my fortune into that beautiful creature you're fondling."

"I shall have to repay you, then," I replied. "Shall I begin with the new Paganini you brought me last week?"

"No, no. Make something up. Compose something to thank me with."

I complied, opening myself to the place in my mind where the music lived, a corner of my consciousness that was never silent, filled with strains of melody. I imagined those strains as thread, or waves, washing over Fox as he stood watching me, taking in the essence of my sire, my patron, my lover, and finding expression in string and wood. It was slow, and hypnotic, almost mournful, the endless waltz of darkness and light, love and death, and I gave myself to it, letting it work its will through me.

I had a brief flash of memory, of the first month I had been his student, of being locked in a pitch black closet, naked, with only my violin and bow, left there for days, food and water pushed through a flap in the door but otherwise alone, blinded, to learn the contours and nuances of the instrument with my other senses. I had fumbled over the flame of the body, made horrible screeching noises the first day and cacophonic plucking sounds the one after, but by the time he had let me out, I knew the instrument's every millimeter, and was ready to learn real music. I was also so desperate for touch that I had fallen to my knees before him in the hallway, my hands clumsy but my mouth eager, and not risen until he hauled me up to fuck me hard against the wall.

I played until my arms ached, which for me was a good long while, and gradually I became aware of hands touching my shoulders, a body pressed warm against my back. I felt his hands slide around to my chest, up beneath and out of the way of my arms, unlacing my shirt, skimming over my skin. I could feel him hard against my hip, and I smiled, but ignored him, weaving layers and layers of shimmering melody together around us.

I touched my mind to his. [Play with me.]

A mental chuckle, and he broke contact, stepping away from me. I heard him cross the room, heard the familiar sounds of him picking up his own violin, Stellara. He returned to where I stood, facing me, and listened a moment, deciphering the structure and rhythm of what I was playing, and a few measures later joined in, adding an effortless harmony that followed me up and down in lazy spirals like two hawks drifting on a thermal in the summer heat.

Yes...oh, yes. I had dreamed of a violin like this, that felt like liquid and sang like flame, and she and I were going to rip creation apart together.

Electricity, like before a lightning strike, rose from my feet all the way out my fingers, and our two joined songs soared higher, until I forgot where I was, who I was, forgot everything but the burning eternal present.

I do not remember when I stopped, or when the intimacy of harmony became the intimacy of touch, but I remember the heat of his mouth taking mine, and I remember that somehow both violins made it to the table before we made our way deep into the house, to the bedroom.

"There is so much in you that you don't even see yet," he murmured, kissing my belly, tongue dipping into my navel. "One day you will be a force of nature, my darling."

I smiled into the darkness, and my words were half a groan. "Like you?"

"Oh, much, much greater." His talented hands freed me from my clothes, and his mind nudged into mine, parting my shielding as easily as he parted my thighs. His fingers closed around me and stroked, and I arched beneath him with a gasp, my mouth closed off with another kiss before I could draw breath. I could still hear the music we had played. It carved itself into my memory along with the dozens of other compositions I had created and thousands more waiting their turn.

He pinned my hands up above my head, and I surrendered to our sonata, and old favorite that was somehow always new.

*****

I shivered in the snow-cluttered air, tears frozen on my face, my breath catching in the frost, a dragon's breath. The stench of smoke and waves of searing heat broke over me even at this distance.

"Here," she said, wrapping something heavy around my shoulders. We'd gotten away with the clothes on our backs and whatever she could carry--ever sensible, she'd grabbed blankets and clothes, and at the last possible second before the flames leapt over the parlor's shelves, my most recent folio of sheet music.

I had saved only one thing. Two, counting the bow.

I couldn't speak. I couldn't think. I stood watching, the screams of the servants reaching me as if from a thousand miles and a thousand years away.

Her hand was hot on my arm, and I could feel that she was crying. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

I dragged my eyes from the fire to my sister's face. The winter wind blew long black strands of hair across her eyes, and even with the strength of the immortals she looked vulnerable, frail, and so young.

I had been young, too, before tonight.

She saw something new and hard in my eyes, and fresh tears fell from hers. "We should get out of here before they come for us too."

I looked back at the fire. An entire wing of the house fell in on itself with a deafening crash, sending clouds of sparks up into the night sky. They could have come during the day when we had nowhere to run, but they too feared the sunlight, feared the light of day falling on their deeds.

"Jason," she said, pleading, "Jason, come away."

I took one step back, and another, and slowly held up the case in my hands, not sure whether to throw it or tuck it under my arm and run, run and run, until daybreak caught me and turned my bones to ash. I wanted it. I wanted death, craved its touch, there was nothing else, nothing, nothing…

"Please," she said, voice breaking.

Nothing, except for her. I couldn't leave her behind, when she'd given up her humanity for me.

"Wait," I said softly. "Not yet." I let the blanket she'd wrapped around me fall, and she moved to pick it up, hugging it to her chest. "They can't see us from here. The trees block the view."

I knew that, of course, because he and I had made love here once, beneath the full moon, wet leaves and grass sticking to my back, a twig stuck in my hair. We'd laughed…god, we had laughed so much, he and I.

I nearly fell to my knees, but held myself upright by sheer force of will and opened the case, dropping it in the snow. She snatched it up as she had the blanket, and moved as if to stop me, but she sensed of course what I was going to do, and with a sigh moved back and away, casting a hunted glance around despite my words.

Every song had been our song, once, and there were so many, so many. For a long time I stood there in the cold, unable to find one, all the music in me dried up and burnt to a cinder, blown away by the uncaring wind. Finally, I dragged one note from the strings, then another, the sound eerily like a sob. I let the pain come, let it take me. Together the Tempest and I wailed out our grief on the hillside, my sister weeping quietly in the cover of the trees, until my hands were so numb I could no longer hold the bow, and it fell from my hand, useless, landing softly in the drift.

She came forward and retrieved it, then carefully took the violin from my shaking hands and placed it back in its case, closing the lid reverently. We stared at each other for a long moment, she in her soot-smudged dress and I so beyond broken there was no word, and at last she asked me, "What do we do now?"

I looked back at our home, and I wondered if he still lay there, or if the fire had already done its work. How long did it take a vampire's body to crumble to dust in a fire? Would there be anything left to identify?

They had destroyed the house, the art, the library, all the instruments, even…even Stellara, I realized, choking back a sob. She was worth more than the entire house, and now there would be nothing left of her but cracked ribs and broken strings, if anything at all. She should have been buried, even if he could not be. They both deserved better than this.

But they were wrong in thinking this would destroy us. All Fox's accounts had me as their heir, and I was still young enough to be alive by human reckoning. I had the information we needed to access all the money. Whatever those men had wanted to believe, Fox was loved here in New York, and I had only to give my name to any establishment in the city to get us a place to stay.

A place to stay…and a place to plan.

I turned to her, and now there was iron determination in my voice that frightened her. "I'm going to kill them," I said, colder than the winter itself. "I'm going to kill them all."

She straightened, and I saw the kindling of wrath in her blue eyes, her jaw set as she nodded. "I'm going to help you."

He had believed, he told me more than once, that the world could still be saved, that humanity wasn’t an irreversible blight upon the Earth, not while there was still beauty in the world. As long as people were making music, offering it up to love or God or whatever muse inspired them, there was hope for mankind. He wasn't human--had not been, for nearly three hundred years—but he still loved them, deep down. He loved their capacity for creation and through his arts patronage tried to encourage as many as possible away from destruction. Strange, really, a vampire so in love with creation…a balance, perhaps, to what we had to do to survive.

But there were some things that could not be saved with harmony. There were some statements that, once made, had only one answer, and that answer was not music, it was blood.

First…first we had to find them. That must begin with planning, and cunning, and a safe place to get warm. A bed for Rebecca. Clean clothes. A bath.

My jaw itched with hunger, but I would not feed. Not until the throat at my teeth belonged to one of the Brotherhood. Not until I heard them beg for mercy.

I reached out and took my sister's arm, and acquiesced to her will to leave, to take the long road toward town, toward safety.

*****

"Twelve," I panted, letting the body fall gracelessly to the floor. The man landed on my boots, and I shoved him away in disgust, pushing him onto his back where his glassy eyes stared up at the ceiling in perpetual surprise.

Blood pooled in my stomach and then rushed through my veins, leaving a bitter satisfaction in its wake. I closed my eyes a moment and enjoyed the sensation. There was little other pleasure left to me now, and I allowed myself to bask in this one. The sheer number of lives I was filling myself up with had brought me to a whole new level of strength--I was gaining power quickly, perhaps too quickly, but I didn’t care.

Rebecca was pale with shock but not with horror. "I can't believe you did that," she said in a loud whisper. "Do you see where we are?"

I looked around and shrugged. "A church. That's good, they don't have to move him to perform the funeral."

She stared down at the dead man, a smile spreading slowly over her mouth--a predatory smile I had never believed her capable of, but had come to like. "We should leave him in the confessional."

The man's blood had tasted like rancid wine and guilt--definitely Catholic. He might have been here to confess in the first place. Forgive me father, for I have sinned…I murdered a good man because an imaginary being in the sky said he should burn for loving another man…

"How many does that leave?" she asked. I held up three fingers.

"I think they're onto us," she noted as we walked out of the church, just in time to hear screaming as the nuns discovered the body behind us. "They're getting harder to find and harder to kill."

She was right. So far we had relied on our strength and speed to give us the advantage, but it turned out a terrified human fighting for his life was a good match to our rudimentary skills. We could finish what we had started, I knew, but after this…I needed more.

"What would you think of going to Japan for a while?" I asked. People scampered out of our way when we walked down the street. I liked it.

"Why?"

"In my reading I found that they have ways of fighting over there--they think of it as an art, even a spiritual practice."

"What good will that do you after this is all over with? How many more people do you intend to kill?"

I paused, taking in the busy city streets, the citizens taking advantage of a brief warming spell before the next snowstorm. Did I want to kill them? Did I really care at all about their meaningless little lives, when it came down to it? Or were they just food to me now, like cows?

"None, necessarily," I answered her, starting to walk again. "But if we're going to live for centuries, it stands to reason someone else might try to kill us. Humans fear us, there are factions among vampires that will hate us, religious fools will justify our deaths by any means they can. I think we should be able to fight back. If these Japanese teachers can give me the knowledge to keep us alive, I would say it's a trip worth taking."

She thought about it most of the walk back to our apartment, but said, "All right. It sounds like fun. You go to study, I'll go to live, and you can teach me whatever's worth knowing."

I smiled grimly, the only way I could smile anymore. "It sounds easy enough for you."

"This is your adventure, brother, not mine. I would be satisfied with vengeance. I agree that self-defense is a good idea, but what do I need with fighting skill when I have you?"

I turned to her and stopped again. "I may not be there," I said, and she looked away. Fox had been alone when they killed him. I couldn't always be right by her side.

She took my hand. "Will my being safe make any of this worthwhile?"

I laughed humorlessly. "Rebecca, nothing is going to make any of it worthwhile again. This, this city, this world--aside from you, standing here with me, none of it is worth anything to me. I want to keep you safe, and I don't particularly want to die today, so we need a plan. We kill the last three of the Brotherhood, and then we sail for the Far East. I'll try to find what I need there, and then we'll return to America to face…whatever it is that God wants to fuck me with next."

Once we had gained the quiet of our rooms above the pub, I stripped off my coat and the long knife I carried and hung both behind the door. As I took the doorway to my bedroom my eyes fell on the violin, resting on a shelf on top of the stack of music we'd salvaged, waiting for me.

I had not touched her since the fire. I did not touch her now. I went into my room and closed the door.

*****

“Why are you here?”

I lay facedown on the dirt floor, my breath coming in gasps, sweat pouring from my entire body and doubling the mud that covered my bare chest. I looked up at the placid white-haired man seated at the far end of the room, venom coating my words as I hissed, “To learn.”

The old man snorted softly. “You could do that anywhere.”

“You’re the best.”

“But why are you here?”

I pushed myself back up to standing. “You know why. To protect my sister.”

“You lie, night-walker.” He gestured to one of the others, his assistants, who came at me again, but this time I was ready. I spun around, dodging the staff that sailed toward my head, and dropped low to kick the man’s feet out from under him. He jumped, twisted in midair, and landed, catlike, swinging the staff again and catching me hard in the ribs. I felt one crack.

The pain made me react before I could think--I charged the man, going for his throat, but he was of course too fast for me and between one breath and the next I was on the ground again.

The assistant stepped back in line with the others, not a hair out of place, and I forced myself up again.

“You are here because of rage and hatred,” the sensei pointed out, calm as ever. He was the perfect stereotype of a martial arts teacher—wizened, stooped, but able to kill a man with three fingers, not that he would ever choose to, as he was also perfectly at peace with himself and the world, even speaking of anger. “I cannot tell you how many men have climbed this mountain looking for revenge against the entire world, and gone away empty handed. White men are the worst, it seems. They all think their pain is unique. That nobody else has ever suffered as they have, or lost what they have.”

“What do you want from me?” I demanded. “A noble cause?”

“You have already killed the men who killed your beloved. You have your vengeance. Yet it is not enough, is it? It will never be enough. You cannot take enough lives to fill the hole in yours.”

“I hate philosophy,” I muttered.

“Then you will hate this even more. You will never be a warrior, night-walker, until you have let go of your anger. Perhaps your kind cannot die by sickness, but you will poison yourself slowly over however many centuries you live, and the purpose of your life will be lost.’

“There is no purpose. Not to me or any of this.”

“Again, you lie.” He studied me in silence for a while, then said, “I will teach you nothing until you are ready to learn.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“Play music,” he replied, and I felt ice in my veins, a fist squeezing the air from my chest. “You must fight as you play--with passion, and power, but also consideration and reflection. There has been no music in your head for years. You will find it again, and when you do you will come and play for me, and then I will teach you.”

I felt myself locked in that dark room again, all my determination and arrogance swept into the darkness with the smell of a snuffed candle. Just me and the music, all over again, with no way out until I gave in to it. The very thought felt like a violation. I had boarded up that part of me and left it derelict with no intention to return, and now this old man, this mortal, wanted to force me back there, back to the smoke and the flame and the breaking of the world.

“No,” I said softly. “No.”

I turned and walked out into the night, grabbing my shirt from the branch it hung on as I passed, my steps becoming a run by the time I hit the path down the mountain. I ran, and I ran, needles of pain stabbing into my lungs, and I didn’t stop running until I was back at the village.

*****

“I’m thinking of getting tattooed,” she said, holding another kimono up to her chest, seeing how the colors matched her pale skin. “No, too bright…there aren’t enough black ones, and I don’t think I could conceal a weapon in this one.”

My sister had changed since we left America. She had cropped her hair short. She had developed a taste for fine clothing that showed off her petite figure. She looked men directly in the eye, which made the Japanese rather uncomfortable given how they treated their women.

“This world isn’t like our old home,” she had said. “Fox…he never treated me like I was inferior because I am a woman. The rest of them try to. But I’m through living small. I eat their kind for breakfast and it’s time I acted like it.”

I had smiled at her. It was such a thoroughly Rebecca thing to say. The world was uncomplicated for her--she was very intelligent, but didn’t care for details. There was too much to see and experience to let such a silly thing as the opinions of men keep her from enjoying herself.

So while I hunted for a teacher, she traveled, soaking up the culture like a sponge. I envied her…but then, I always had.

I was sitting, staring at the Tempest, afraid to touch her. I had been sitting that way for almost two days since I’d returned from the mountain filthy and exhausted.

I wasn’t stupid enough to pretend the sensei was wrong. I had been to other teachers, several in the last two years, and had learned all they had to offer in a matter of months, but always came away hungry, never knowing enough. This man had the reputation, and I could see it in his eyes; I wanted what he knew. So far, he had taught me two things: he was a perceptive old bastard and I was a fool.

“Becca-chan,” I said tiredly, “I hate this thing.”

She came over and kissed the top of my head. “No you don’t. You’ve said that a thousand times.”

“I want to throw it in the fire.”

“You’ve said that, too, and I still don’t believe you. Maybe you’re not ready to play again, but you’ll never hate it. That would be like hating Fox.”

“No,” I told her. “The Tempest is a part of me. It would be like hating myself.”

She smiled. “And you don’t?”

“I don’t know.”

She picked up the violin and set it in my lap, then took my hand and placed it on the curved wood. “Then I suggest you find out, before you let that old man’s henchmen beat you up again.”

She gathered up her armload of garments and left the room, and I was alone with the violin, my hand still exactly where she’d put it. Once, I had never been able to touch the instrument without caressing it, even unconsciously. Now, it felt like my fingers were burning.

“All right,” I sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”

I rose, my hands fumbling for their old places. The violin felt like lead in my arms, the bow awkward, as if I’d never played before.

I stood in position for several long minutes, trying to force my arm to move, groping in my mind for any piece of music, mine or another’s. Nothing came. There was nothing there. The well was dry.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Music was emotion, and I had not allowed myself to feel any for a very long time. I was afraid of what would happen if I undammed the river; would a rushing torrent drown me, or would it simply be an empty bed of cracked earth? Once the flood began would it ever stop? Could I survive it?

And did I want to?

The present was nothing but the empty riverbed. I turned, reluctantly, to the past.

Fox, I thought, bringing his image to mind for the first time since he had left me. Oh, my love. I constructed the picture carefully, one detail at a time: his laugh, his hands, the scents of immortality and anise. I remembered his arms around me as he stood at my back; we had watched many a moonrise that way, out on the terrace, just the two of us and the starlight and the ephemeral peace of the night.

I remembered the first moment I knew I loved him, before we had ever touched, when I was only a stable boy caring for his prized beasts. I had been on my way to bed at the end of a long day’s mucking out the stalls, and heard music. I followed the sound, mesmerized, until I reached the garden, and there I saw the lord of the house, in silhouette, playing for the moon. I could still remember the song, and the way he turned toward me at my approach even though I thought I was being too quiet to hear. His eyes had met mine, and I felt something…acknowledgment, recognition, a quickening of my heart no human had ever caused. I backed away slowly, suddenly very afraid, and it was days before he found me in the stables, that flash of connection all we needed to fall upon each other, mouth seeking mouth, his surprise and joy surpassing mine.

That first song…I remembered it, and it came back to me in full, passing into the strings slowly. Without meaning to I merged with the song of mourning I had played on the hill, and I dragged the music out of me, feeding it to my memories, my whole body shaking with strain and sorrow.

He was gone. Oh, god, he was gone. My one great love, my teacher and friend, taken from me, and I was alone, and cold, it was so cold. Great cracks split the surface of my heart, and at last the grief slammed into me, the river unleashed.

My fingers slipped on the strings, and I sank to my knees, clutching the Tempest to my chest as I sobbed.

*****

The nightmares came thick and fast after that. Sometimes I burned, sometimes I watched him burn. Sometimes I killed, but every night I died, over and over again, and woke with smoke in my lungs, coughing, crying, fighting my way out of sleep.

I kept playing. It seemed now that I couldn’t stop. Some days it was the only thing that enabled me to catch even an hour’s rest. When I wasn’t sleeping, I was working my body beyond even a vampire’s endurance, exhausting myself with all the exercises and routines the other teachers had given me, combining them the way I combined pieces of music, one school of fighting morphing into another until it was all my own.

My sister didn’t comment on how driven I was, but she looked worried and clucked over how little I fed. To appease her--and because I needed the strength--I hunted more, prowling the village streets for those foolish enough to walk about alone at night, taking what I needed, never too much. Occasionally we hunted together, but it was best to stay as covert as possible in a small town like this one, and often she ventured into the surrounding areas, to farms and other villages, for her prey. She liked to travel. I liked efficiency.

One morning I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, the Tempest resting on my bare stomach, my hand wrapped around the bow. I had been awakened by screaming, but for once it was not in a dream—our next door neighbor’s wife was in labor. It had begun the night before and there was a flurry of activity going on, midwives and doctors coming and going, young women sent to fetch supplies, the husband pacing in the adjoining room and steeling himself against the heart-wrenching sound of her cries.

I didn’t blame him. I had killed people, but even in my lust for vengeance I had never been interested in causing suffering. Life was already suffering. There was no reason to create more.

Finally, I couldn’t bear the noise anymore, and I got up and started to play, something lively to drown out the sounds. The walls of the building were paper-thin, so perhaps the music might lessen some of the tension on the other side; if the woman could take her mind off the pain it might go easier for her. Or perhaps not. I knew next to nothing about childbirth except that it was loud.

I half expected someone to pound on the wall to silence me, but no one did. They were probably used to my playing by now--I had been at it for weeks, dusk till dawn and sometimes all morning until sleep found me.

I was not an empath, exactly, but had something like the gift that was almost as strong as my ability to read minds; Fox had spotted my ability to read emotion through music, and to manipulate it. He had intended to teach me to master it when I was powerful enough to call it forth at will. It had remained a bit unpredictable, and I was secretly glad we’d never gotten around to working with it, as the idea was frightening--I wanted to create beauty, not change people. It was one thing he and I had never agreed on.

It meant, however, that the deeper I slid into the music, the more clearly I could feel what was going on next door. I could have blocked it off pretty easily if I’d wanted to, but something drew me in, and I let my awareness move through the wall.

Fear. Fear, and pain. All was not well with the woman; she was too old for this baby, and had been sick and weak for months. Her husband had confidence in the midwife, but beneath it was more fear--he loved his wife, had known her since they were children, and he prayed continuously as he paced that she might live through the birth. She was a part of his soul, without her he would be a hollow thing, a ghost confined to a moving body…

I knew that feeling. It had been my life for two years.

The village men had laughed at the neighbor, who had two daughters and no sons--girls were worthless, he’d better pray for a boy this time. And it was true that he had been inattentive to his daughters and had hoped for a son--but if his wife could only live, it didn’t matter. If the gods gave him another girl it didn’t matter. They would find a way to afford three dowries. Just let his wife live.

The wife, too, was afraid. The pain was wrong, it was sharp and strange. The baby had stopped moving in her belly. The midwife’s face was grave and ashen. There was too much blood.

I’m going to die…oh, my poor husband, my poor daughters. Mother and Father, Grandmother, please take care of the little one, I will be there with you all soon.

I found myself caught up in their struggles, in the immediacy of their world. I had tried hard to hate humans. I had tried to hold myself apart. Yet here they were, and they were just ordinary people, brave and trying so hard just to live…to live. And here I was--I would live forever, and I would never live at all.

I altered the direction of the music, taking it toward a theme I had memorized as I stalked around the village streets. Traditional Japanese instruments were not to my taste, but I had heard something there, something serene and eternal that spoke of the land beneath our feet and the distant past shrouded in mist and memory. I wove that into what I was creating, and reached out to the woman as another contraction hit her.

It’s all right, I thought, to her or to myself I didn’t know. Don’t be afraid.

There was one last wrenching scream, and silence fell beyond the wall.

I knew what I was sensing, but I refused to accept it, and wrapped a blanket of music around the little one who lay unmoving in the midwife’s arms.

Was there a purpose to anything? Did my living and loss mean anything in this place? Did anyone’s? There seemed to be no answers, not even for the undying. I might live a thousand years and never love anything again the way this fisherman loved his wife--but damned if I was going to let something so small and precious slip away, not without a fight.

And if there was one thing I knew how to do, it was fight.

I imagined I could see the baby’s heart, its tiny lungs that had never drawn a breath of air, and together, the Tempest and I pulled.

I heard a low murmur in Japanese--the midwife, telling the woman there was nothing she could do, that the cord had wrapped around the baby’s throat and it was too late. The midwife pressed cloths between the woman’s legs; she had fully expected the woman to die, but somehow the bleeding had slowed and stopped, her womb closing as soon as the baby was out. But the baby…the baby never had a chance.

Suddenly there was a strangled coughing sound, and a tiny wail went up--heads all around the room snapped toward the bundle of bloody blankets that was now wiggling.

Oaths, curses, exclamations followed, and the woman was weeping, everyone was weeping.

Exhaustion swept up over me, and I nearly dropped the violin. I sagged back onto the bed, shaking, overcome by what had just happened—it had to be a coincidence. There was no way, it simply wasn’t possible…

There is so much in you that you don't even see yet…one day you will be a force of nature, my darling.

The last thing I heard before I passed out was the distant sound of the midwife, telling my neighbor he had a son.

*****

The path up the mountain wound and doubled back on itself as it climbed the steep stones. It took hours to reach the top and the night was half over before I surmounted the flight of carved steps that led to the temple.

The guards remembered me, and moved back to let me pass. If they were surprised that I had returned, they gave no sign.

I knew he would be waiting for me, and sure enough there he was, cross-legged on his mat as if he had not moved this whole time. He looked at me evenly, eyes traveling from my face down to what I carried, then back up again, waiting.

I came to stand in the same place I had last time, in the pool of light shining down from the sky overhead. I bowed.

He inclined his head toward me, still unspeaking.

I smiled, lifted the Tempest, and began to play.